In creating his new office of the prime minister, boris should look to berlin | thearticle

Boris Johnson is still being assailed from all directions, but he is beginning to get a grip on the situation and his enemies may have overreached. Last week was the most tempestuous of what

has anyway been perhaps the stormiest tenure of modern times. Yet he has survived and if he can regain the initiative in the course of this week, he could yet save his premiership. In the

immortal words of Marshal Foch: “My centre is giving way, my right is in retreat; situation excellent. I shall attack.” Foch said that in 1914 just before his great victory on the Marne,

which halted the Germans and saved Paris. But it took four more years to win the First World War. Boris too, if he can survive a no confidence vote, will have to hunker down and focus

relentlessly on the economy for the next two years if he is to win the next election and secure his coveted second term. Only a week ago, though it feels like an eternity, he announced the

creation of an Office of the Prime Minister. The details have yet to be fleshed out, but the plan seems to be to merge 10 Downing Street and at least some functions of the Cabinet Office

into a fully-fledged department of state, under a new Chief of Staff who will also be a Cabinet minister, alongside a new Permanent Secretary. The hope is that with a strengthened and

modernised operation at its heart, the Government can soon get back on track and tackle the most urgent problems facing the country: inflation, energy and Ukraine. Over the weekend, Boris

Johnson made a start on the No 10 revamp with several new appointments. It emerged that Steven Barclay, the present Cabinet Office Minister, would take over as Chief of Staff, while Dame

Emily Lawson, the head of the NHS vaccination programme, is to be the new Permanent Secretary. Guto Harri, who served under Boris when he was Mayor of London, will return to be his new head

of communications. The most controversial of these appointments is that of Steve Barclay — though it was hardly a surprise, given that he was already working closely with the PM on delivery.

Barclay has shown himself to be a loyal and able lieutenant under both the May and Johnson administrations. His new role means that he has leapfrogged over less reliable rivals for the

succession, which explains why he is getting a rough ride. Three former Chiefs of Staff at No 10 lined up to criticise his appointment. Jonathan Powell, who effectively created the post

under Tony Blair, suggested that no sitting MP, let alone a minister, could possibly combine their duties with the demands of running the new Prime Minister’s department. Powell even

wondered whether the Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case, had “agreed” to this triple role. Perhaps, like Sir Humphrey, he thinks Case should have muttered: “Very courageous, Prime Minister.” The

subtext to this concerted onslaught is the fear of the Civil Service that its control of the Government machine may be usurped by politicians. The ex-mandarins who monstered Barclay are

right to be worried. A “senior Downing Street source is quoted as saying: “What we’re doing is shifting [the] balance fundamentally so that power goes to ministers rather than unelected

officials”. The idea that the Cabinet Secretary could have vetoed such a reorganisation of Downing Street shows how strong the grip of the mandarin culture remains in Whitehall. That culture

was tested to destruction during the pandemic, when officials floundered and panicked. The PM is surely right to go for root and branch change, rather than tinker with the system. Like

other great reformers of the past, from Walpole (who created the office of Prime Minister) to Lloyd George and Churchill (who forced Whitehall to adapt in order to win the two world wars),

Johnson has found that, in politics as in science, necessity is the mother of invention. As it happens, there is an excellent precedent for the new model No 10. In Berlin, across the Spree

from Norman Foster’s post-modern Reichstag building, stands the largest government headquarters in the world: the Bundeskanzleramt or Federal Chancellery. Ten times the size of the White

House, the Chancellery building is a far cry from the Palais Schaumburg in Bonn from which Konrad Adenauer set about reviving postwar West Germany in 1949. Despite its imposing appearance,

however, the Office of the German Chancellor is actually on a similar scale to the proposed Office of the British Prime Minister, with about 630 staff, compared to around 400 who currently

work at No 10 — the latter presumably now to be augmented. Importantly, the Chancellery has a Chief who normally also sits in Cabinet with the title “Minister for Special Tasks”; the present

incumbent is Wolfgang Schmidt. Historically, the Chief of the Chancellery often goes on to hold even higher office: Wolfgang Schäuble, who served Helmut Kohl in that role, became Finance

Minister and eventually succeeded him as leader of the Christian Democrats. Frank-Wolfgang Steinmeier, who ran Gerhard Schröder’s Chancellery, became Foreign Minister, leader of the Social

Democrats and is now the Federal President. Germany has a (mostly) justified reputation for administrative efficiency. Although the Federal Republic is bigger than the UK, the differentials

are gradually diminishing and in many ways the two countries are more comparable than ever before. Brexit notwithstanding, we should not be ashamed to learn from such a close neighbour and

ally. The Prime Minister could do a lot worse than to request an invitation to visit Olaf Scholz, Angela Merkel’s successor, in order to see for himself how the Federal Government’s command

centre functions. Chancellor Scholz is now in Washington for talks with President Biden about Ukraine. That will also be Boris Johnson’s priority, if and when he goes to Berlin. While he is

about it, he could also meet the new leader of the opposition Christian Democrats, Friedrich Merz, who is more conservative than the centrist Mrs Merkel. Getting Downing Street right is much

more important in the long run than all the sound and fury now surrounding the PM. He needs to focus on creating a machine that is capable of delivering highly ambitious policies in the two

years that remain before the next election looms. If he succeeds, it will be not merely a reform but a revolution in government. Boris already has his place in history, but is looking for

new fields to conquer. As the logical next step after Brexit, the new Prime Minister’s Department could be his most permanent legacy. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication

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